Why do I suck at combat?

So, I've played through Fable 3 four times now and I've gone down all three combat paths: Spells, Ranged, Melee and of the three Melee is by far the hardest. I listed them in what I found to be easiest to hardest, but the jump from ranged to Melee is pretty big.

However, if you want to do melee, let's talk about melee.

Rolling

The first thing you're going to need to figure out how to do is roll your way out of a group. Rolling is the special sauce that makes combat in Fable easy. Normally if you're running magic or ranged, you just roll->shoot and call it a day. However, with melee you leave yourself open when you attack so you'll want to not just roll to avoid attacks, but actually roll out of groups. The trick here is that you never want to have an enemy behind you when you start attacking. This often means you'll need a half dozen successive rolls to give yourself a nice position where all enemies are in the same direction as you.

Attacking

Because of the way the AI pathing works, your enemies will spread out a little as they come at you, but they generally won't envelope you. What usually happens is that your attack combo brings you forward inside of the group. This is kind of the worse possible position so usually you'll want to keep your attack combo's short (ie. 2-3 hits) and then roll back out.

Rinse and Repeat

The problem with this strategy is that it'll take a while to take down any decent sized group. Some things that you'll find help are picking a faster weapon (to get a feel for the pace) and trying to engage smaller groups. This will leave less opportunity to get surrounded and beat down. Finally, always remember to roll towards a section you've already cleared. You don't want to roll into another group and make things harder for yourself.

Ranged

Ranged works similarly to Melee is that you roll away from the group except now you can just start shooting, instead of waiting for them to get close. Don't bother charging up shots, its rarely worth it. Just keep firing away and rolling out of range. Most mobs will wait before chasing you so you'll have ample time to light them up.

Magic

I found Magic to be absurdly easy. No mana bar means you can spam spells, and the ability to charge them up usually means I entered every battle with my enemies half dead. I liked something with electricity (for stun) and fire (for damage). When I see a group of enemies run at me, I start charging. Get a nice big AoE charge while I wait for them all to get in range and release. This'll just about kill off the smaller mobs and wound the larger ones. Then I roll away and do it again. I rarely ever use direct attacks unless there is only one big mob left.